REVIEW: [Mona Hatoum/Performing for the Camera] @ Tate Modern

Mona Hatoum (4 May - 21 August 2016)
Performing for the Camera (18 February - 12 June 2016)
Tate Modern, London

I popped down to Tate Modern recently for the Mona Hatoum exhibition and whilst I was there, I also had a look around the photography and performance exhibition 'Performing for the Camera'.

Mona Hatoum has been one of my favourite artists since I first started taking art seriously at A Level. Her work commands your attention and at times has a very confrontational presence; it's unsettling, it's visceral and yet poetic too. I have seen a select few pieces of her work over the years, but I was really looking forward to seeing a whole exhibit devoted to her practice.

One of my personal highlights was the installation "Light Sentence" (as in prison sentences), as often Hatoum's work displays political and social undertones. In between a barricade of small cages stacked on top one another, a single light bulb swings in the centre. The projected light from the bulb creates an encompassing surrounding shadow cast around the entire room, transforming it into a 'prison-like' chamber. I think what really worked so well about this piece was the subtle movement of the shadows panning across the walls. The light bulb not only swings like a pendulum, but also moves slowly up and down and the consequent movement of the shadows on the wall makes you feel like you are moving - or swaying. It creates a sense of unsteadiness. The other obvious association I immediately made was feeling like I was in an interrogation room. We've all seen scenes like this in film, where a character wakes up in a dark room, a sinister bulb swings erratically and reveals the character's predicament under confinement or capture. There was something dreamy or illusive about the shadows creating an isolated cell, in comparison to the actual physical barricade in the middle of the room. It felt like being in the point of view of someone slightly hazy.

Another piece I really enjoyed for it's simplicity is '+ and -' (1994/2004). A circular container of sand has a rotating beam that simultaneously smooths and rakes the sand. This is described as a constant process of making and unmaking, a balance of two processes doing and undoing at the same time. I just found this to be really poetic but articulated in such a simple way.



As I mentioned I was at Tate Modern for the Mona Hatoum exhibition, but then I noticed the photography exhibition on and decided to take a look. I really enjoyed this exhibition too. It deconstructs performative acts for photography and allows us to see some of the outtakes or additional shots leading up an iconic image.

"Serious performance art, portraiture, or simply posing for a photograph? What does it mean to perform for the camera? The exhibition explores two forms, looking at how performance artists use photography and how photography in itself is a performance."

This exhibition featured some obvious names in the realm of performance and photography including Charles Ray, Yves Klein, Martin Parr, Erwin Wurm and Ai Wei Wei just to name a few. I really enjoyed this exhibition. I think that it offered a different perception of the artists involved - especially the process and technique to which they choose to use photography to capture an image or an artwork. Especially now where photography is such an accessible and convenient channel of documentation and creativity - it lends itself to some great possibilities.

REVIEW: [Thinking with the Body] by Wayne McGregor @ The Wellcome Collection

Thinking with the Body by Wayne McGregor
The Wellcome Collection
19 September - 27 October 2013

This is my recent review I wrote for the online publishing site: http://intuition-online.co.uk/article.php?id=3416

A study of mind, movement and dance, 'Thinking with the body' was the most recent exhibition presented by the Wellcome Collection in the increasing emergence of collaborative art and science practice. In recent years, artists have become ever more interdisciplinary and multi-faceted practitioners in their own right; engaging with an array of experts, scientists and consultants alike to fuel the research invested in their artworks. In this exhibition Wayne McGregor investigates aspects of perception, sensation and physical movement in relation to cognitive and social sciences, demonstrated through the art of dance itself.

The exhibition certainly addressed some really intriguing ideas around the body as a tool and vessel of physical expression. Using dance as a case study, this spontaneous and inexplicable expressive form of behaviour allows the dancer to use their body as their chosen medium. In fact using the body as an artistic medium is not purely restricted to just dancers, performance artists have been doing the same thing for years. Whilst watching the interchange between both the dancers and choreographers, you feel very much like a voyeur; looking in on a unique form of language by those who possess an obvious enriched understanding and utility of the body as an instrument. It goes beyond ordinary gesture, its flexible, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes amazingly subtle, as if they own a completely different embedded vocabulary of movements they are able to appropriate at will. Just like any other type of artist, dancing explores the endless possibilities of the chosen medium and in this respect, the limits to which the body can be used to express both emotion and narrative. Dance is certainly not just a visually spectacular practice but an innate form of expression drawn from the emotive core. As with many art forms; what appears on the surface  is only half the story, the rather more interesting art lies in the cognitive and psychological intentions driving the resulting physical catharsis.

REFERENCE: A Brush with Space

Gregor Schneider

Walking in Contrapposto (1968) by Bruce Nauman

Walking in Contrapposto (1968) by Bruce Nauman

REVIEW: [Blackout] WEYA @ Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham

As part of the World Event Young Artists Festival in Nottingham, the majority of art venues and galleries were getting involved in this huge event, with exclusive performances and showcases from a wide variety of artists. Nottingham Contemporary hosted the sensory experience of Blackout, described as "a rare opportunity to explore the potential of our minds. With sensory limitations placed on the artists and audience, cutting edge musicians play anonymously and are never revealed in the pitch black...leaving the crowd to personally explore the sensory interplay between their imagination and the music."

This sounded like a fantastic method of heightening senses, and producing an unusual platform to experience music and visual art. As with any type of artwork of this kind, there is always a trepidation in not knowing what to expect. The programme stated that the artist playing would also remain unknown and therefore there was no way of knowing what to prepare for, what may lie beyond the darkness.

When it came to actually entering the darkened space, ushered in one by one, the intensity of the dark is quite intimidating. I don't think anyone nearly expects darkness that is so pitch black that you literally cannot see your hand in front of your face. I realised that as soon as I entered the room and couldn't see, I was reaching out in front of me for someone, anyone. I felt comforted when I could feel my fingers brush across a complete stranger's back. There's an odd sense of reassurance. The expanse of black seemed so vast, and yet you feel trapped in a bubble, unable to reach anyone else, even though you can hear people around you. I think the most unnerving sensation throughout all of this is the sense of displacement. You cannot locate yourself in relation to anyone else or the space. You have no idea exactly how many people are sharing the space with you, and how close or far away they all are. It is rather disorientating. After a short period, as more and more viewers were entering, you could hear people sitting down, and I felt uneasy about what the appropriate behaviour was in this circumstance. I didn't know whether I was expected to sit, stand, walk, regardless that at this point I was much more comfortable standing still. I found that when I actually decided to sit down,  I felt a sense of relief. The ground seemed to give me a better sense of where I was, where I could sit and slowly move my arms around me. My biggest concern was whether people would bump or step into you unexpectedly, but surprisingly that didn't happen. Perhaps everyone was staying still.

REFERENCE: Traps and Manoeuvres

Often in my influences, film plays a big part in inspiring me in the use of space to create mood and express narrative. In the realm of film, anything is possible in terms of set design.

In this scene from Resident Evil (2002) not only does the space captivate me, but the way in which the characters move within the space. What really strikes me about this scene is how bright it is. Clean, light, nothing to hide. What often tends to happen in film, is that there is a common association between small spaces with tension and this often means dark, uncomfortable, and shadowed sets -making us fear what we can't see. In this instance, the corridor is anything but, it's stark. And it works in the film's favour. The starkness and sterile nature of the scene will make everything  that happens within it more pronounced. In most films, it's what we can't see, what we make for ourselves that is more terrifying. In a daring juxtaposition, it is challenging us to face what the scene is about to present with a candid reality. What is more terrifying is that they want us to see.

 

Resident Evil (2002) directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

One of the other great qualities about this scene is how it dictates the movement of the charcters trapped within it. As these lasers begin to cross through the length of the corridor, the characters have no choice but to evade as best they can to survive. It breaks the already small space into even smaller ones, adding to the claustrophobia and lack of escape that dooms the characters.

It just goes to show that there aren't any rules when using spaces to create a particular atmosphere, it is how you utilise what goes beyond just the space with imagination that make these scenes iconic.

PRACTICE: Jack in a Box

There is a really interesting border between comfort and confinement. The smaller spaces are, the more we tend to feel uncomfortable and constrained. At the same time, some people are reassured by smaller spaces, by a sanctuary, a pocket of space big enough for themselves alone. Just by comparing cenophobia and claustrophobia for example; one is the fear of barren, open spaces, and the other is a fear of crowded, tight spaces. The fact that we are able to pivot towards either extreme demonstrates just how much space can affect us. Can a smaller space become a refuge or a prison?

Above the Below (2003) by David Blaine

1 Without (2010) by Wannes Goetschalckx

1 Kind (2007) by Wannes Goetschalckx

Wannes Goetschalckx is a performance artist who works a lot with restricted spaces. He looks at the emotional and physical in relation to body and space. He aims to reveal the hidden and apparent constraints in human life, the coexistence of comfort and pain, exposure and enclosure, cage and shelter.

"1 Without" is a video installation featuring Goetschlackx doing different activities in various sized wooden boxes, exploring the notion of captivity. It is reminiscent of what children do when they find empty boxes and containers to hide or play inside. From a young age, we learn to explore with our imagination. As we get older we tend to associate smaller spaces more and more with confinement and not play. We see spaces only on the surface, and we no longer seem to possess that curiosity for creating spaces of our own.

'Watch Where You Look' (2012) by Vivienne Du

The Box Task Day 16, Big Brother 6 (2005) courtesy of Channel 4

A task from Big Brother 6 required all the housemates to stay in their assigned cardboard boxes for as long as possible. Due to the nature of Big Brother, the activity was posed as a fun and entertaining treatment of the housemates' endurance. At first the housemates seemed to enjoy their new challenge but clearly as the time went on, the confinement of staying in a box for hours on end clearly became too unbearable for most. Three managed to stay in their boxes for just over 26 hours, you wonder whether they were simply not as affected by space or their determination drove them to stay.

Freak Like Me, courtesy of BBC3